Every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without retconnng away the previous story. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today, we take a look at the odd point in Psylocke's career where she had magic ninja powers (plus a magic facial tattoo, to boot!)...

So we all know the basics about Psylocke. She was a British telepath who then got transformed into a British telepath who was also an Asian ninja who liked to talk about the focused totality of her powers, like here in Uncanny X-Men #271 (by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee and Scott Williams)...







And so it went for a number of years until Uncanny X-Men #328 (by Scott Lobdell, Joe Madureira and Tim Townsend). The X-Men had been keeping Sabretooth as a prisoner in the X-Mansion for some time, as Professor Xavier believed that he could rehabilitate the feral mutant killer. Xavier gave up in this issue. However, while the X-Men waited for the United State government to take Sabretooth into custody (because, of course, you should always trust a mutant killing machine to the shadowy parts of the government), X-Force member Boomer (the X-Force folks were living in the mansion at the time) decided to confront Sabretooth. She had tried to befriend him after Wolverine had stabbed Sabretooth in the brain, seemingly leaving him as an innocent, nearly brain dead creature (sort of sounds like Boomer, to be frank) and now she felt very betrayed. Psylocke, meanwhile, monitored the exchange to make sure Boomer didn't do something dumb. Who, then, is the bigger fool? The fool (Boomer) or the fool that lets the fool do foolish things (Psylocke)?

So this leads to a pretty awesome fight between Psylocke and Sabretooth, which allowed Madureira to really cut loose, which you know he loved to do...











Ouch.

So the next issue, Wolverine decides to take Archangel on a magical quest for some famed elixir from the famous Crimson Dawn...





In the end (in Uncanny X-Men #330, by Lobdell, Jeph Loeb, Madureira and Townsend), they save Psylocke's life by entering a representation of her soul into the elixir...









So Psylocke is saved! You didn't think it would be THAT easy, though, do you? Go to the next page to find out how her "rescue" went a bit wrong...

We don't see her again until Uncanny X-Men #333 (by Scott Lobdell, Pascual Ferry and a bunch of inkers), where she is recovered and now has a tattoo on her face that oddly no one mentions...





In Uncanny X-Men #335 (by Lobdell, Madureira and Townsend), we see that Psylocke is acting coldly now that she has her new abilities...



In Uncanny X-Men 338, she just introduces the new ability to slide out of shadows out of nowhere...





In X-Men #61 (by Scott Lobdell, Cedric Nocon, Dave Hunt and Mike Miller), we see that someone is calling due stuff owed to them due to saving her...







This leads to a Crimson Dawn mini-series by Ben Raab, Salvador Larroca and Art Thibert, which ends with Archangel saving Psylocke from the bad parts of the Crimson Dawn (while still getting to keep her new powers) by giving up part of his own mortality...



The last major use of the Crimson Dawn came when Shadow King was trying to wipe out the world's telepaths and in X-Men #78 (by Joe Kelly, German Garcia and Art Thibert), Psylocke survives by using the Crimson Dawn...



and then traps Shadow King in her own mind, albeit giving up her telepathic powers in the process...



So how did the Crimson Dawn powers get written out? Go to the next page to find out!

Chris Claremont brought Psylocke back with new powers (telekinesis instead of telepathy), but he really did not like the whole Crimson Dawn thing, as he felt that it made an already complicated character even MORE complicated.

So Claremont had a simple two-part plan to deal with it.

Part one, kill her off in X-Treme X-Men #2 (by Claremont and Salvador Larroca)...







Part two, a few years later, bring her back in Uncanny X-Men #454 (by Claremont, Alan Davis and Mark Farmer) via her reality-warping brother, Jamie Braddock, only now she's sans her Crimson Dawn tattoo and Crimson Dawn powers.





Easy breezy!

Well, except for the part where Claremont intended to do it all in a year or so, but then Marvel temporarily had a "Dead is dead" policy, so he could not bring her back until a few years later. Luckily, they did eventually let him bring her back!

If anyone has a suggestion for Abandoned Love, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com